La intérprete del juzgado (The court interpreter)
MCER B2288 palabras
Rita has been interpreting in courts for nineteen years, and the question she is asked most often at parties is whether it is difficult to translate quickly. It is not, she says. Speed is the easy part; you can train speed. What is difficult is everything else.
An interpreter in a courtroom is not allowed to explain, to summarise or to improve. If a witness says something confused, the confusion has to survive the translation. If a witness is rude, the rudeness has to arrive. Rita once had to render, word for word, an insult aimed at the judge, in a room where everybody turned to look at her while she said it.
The hardest cases, she says, are not the violent ones. They are the ones where a word does not exist. She has been asked to translate legal terms into languages whose speakers have never lived under that legal system, and family relationships that the other language divides differently: a language may have two separate words where the court expects one, and the answer that a defendant gives will depend on which one the interpreter chooses.
In those moments she is supposed to stop everything and tell the court that there is a problem, which is exactly what nobody in a busy courtroom wants to hear at half past six in the evening. Judges are patient about this roughly as often as anyone else who is tired and running behind schedule, which is to say sometimes.
She has done it eleven times in nineteen years. She keeps the number because, as she puts it, those are the eleven occasions on which she was doing her job properly and everyone in the room wished she would stop.
Palabras que quizá no conozcas
- courtjuzgado, tribunal
- witnesstestigo
- to summariseresumir
- rudenessgrosería, falta de respeto
- to render (a phrase)trasladar, verter
- defendantacusado, acusada
- properlycomo es debido, bien
Preguntas
Se contestan con el texto delante. No es memoria: es entender.
According to Rita, what is the easy part of her job?
Working fast — Speed is the easy part; you can train speed. Justo lo que le preguntan en las fiestas es lo que ella considera fácil.
An interpreter may improve what a confused witness says.
False — Falso, y el texto es tajante: no puede explicar, ni resumir, ni mejorar. Si el testigo se lía, la confusión tiene que sobrevivir a la traducción.
Why does the writer mention the insult aimed at the judge?
To show that the rule applies even when obeying it is uncomfortable — El detalle que lo demuestra es dónde pone la mirada: todos se giran hacia ELLA mientras lo dice. Cumplir la regla la deja en el sitio incómodo.
What does Rita consider the hardest kind of case?
The ones where the other language has no equivalent word — Lo dice descartando lo que esperaríamos: NO son los violentos. Son aquellos en que una palabra no existe, o en que la otra lengua divide el parentesco de otra manera.
Why does it matter which word the interpreter chooses?
Because the defendant's answer changes with the word used — El texto lo dice sin dramatizar: si una lengua tiene dos palabras donde el tribunal espera una, la respuesta del acusado depende de cuál elija ella. La elección no es de estilo.
Why does Rita remember the number eleven?
Because they are the times she did her job properly and annoyed everyone — La última frase junta las dos cosas a propósito: hacerlo bien y que toda la sala quisiera que se callara. Once veces en diecinueve años, y las guarda por eso.